Beck has said this was one of a few songs he brought to Morning Phase from an album he had worked on in Nashville. That album never quite got to an end point, but he rescued some things from it, like "Waking Light."

To some extent, I consider this the "title track" of Morning Phase. There are many themes on the album, but the idea of refreshing and reinvigorating after a time of darkness is a main one; it seems to be expressed most directly here in "Waking Light."

Beck hints at the difficulties of the darkness, where you can easily lose yourself ("profile in shadow" and "somewhere you can't make it home"), and referring to it as a "landslide a-reeling." These are common Beck ideas throughout his career: where do you find hope when you've lost yourself? How to keep going? A lot of times, Beck has written about music being a savior, but here it's much more basic: less about what will save you and more that you will be saved. He offers it as advice: the shadows that haunt you and cover up your true self will drift away in the morning light. You will find peace.

"Waking Light" premiered live when Beck performed it on The Tonight Show around the time Morning Phase was released. Then on the tour proper, they played it at most all of the shows (44 of the 57 gigs). For reasons unknown though, they chopped the middle instrumental and the third chorus out of the song on stage. (At first, I assumed it was for TV time constraints, but they continued doing it that way all year.) Other than that, it sounded quite nice, the warm flow of the record coming through swimmingly. Beck played the ending guitar solo too.